Unwanted Side Effects
by cuby18
Summary: There are differences in the way different people react to a speech. Or Alex giving a very needed piece of advice. Written for Spyfest 2019, week 3.


**Unwanted Side Effects**

**For the prompt: ''Alex's best punchline to a villain''**

* * *

Alex was racking his brains to see how he ended it this situation once again. He was, once again, caught trespassing, taken prisoner and currently waiting for his captor to turn up. A normal day in the life of a teenage spy he mused, at least if someone based the norms off his seizable experience.

This time it was just a stroke of bad luck that got him caught, especially since he was caught by someone he wasn't even spying on at the time. He was just returning from his assignment (that surprisingly didn't end with him getting caught, which, upon reflection, should be warning enough) for debrief and to give Smithers back his equipment when it happened. He was just passing by some old Victorian villa and only stopped for a few seconds to admire the bushes trimmed to resemble the scenes from the Greek mythology, something that you don't see on your everyday walk when a hand grabbed him from behind.

Before he could as much as turn around or otherwise react, he was unceremoniously restrained with hands tied behind his back and something covering his head. In a furry of movements, he was dragged somewhere (presumably onto the property that he was just admiring), occasionally brushing against some trees and scrapping his shirt, when the temperature suddenly dropped and they started descending. Somewhere on the way he must have hit his head at some wall or something (a very real possibility based of the treatment he received outside) because he woke up restrained in a chair with a giant headache.

Trying to organise his thoughts he started analyzing the room he found himself in. It looked kind of like a dungeon, with stone floor and walls and even some drops of water sliding down the cracks. It was quite surprising because on the outside the house looked like your usual high-end villa.

Looking down at himself he saw that they took away all of his equipment save for another set of explosive earings that could help him escape if he managed to get out of his restrains. But he was a bit worried about the rest of his equipment since some of it was quite incriminating, especially since he didn't think it necessary to put up all the protections once the mission ended. Especially since his equipment very rarely ever survived his missions and usually got destroyed before he was even in any real contact with the enemy, his current situation notwithstanding. After testing the restrains for another hour he gave up the thought of escaping the situation with the current state of affairs and decided to wait for his host.

He didn't have to wait long, it seemed almost as if they waited for him to stop testing the possible escape routes before entering. He belatedly remembered that he did see something in one of the cracks that could be a camera but didn't pay it all that much attention at the time.

The person that entered filled Alex with the sense of dread. He knew his type very well. The worst part of every mission, he found, was the waiting part. Waiting for a villain, preferably restricted to some kind of chair, and hoping against all odds that it wasn't about to happen again. And it was usually all for nought. But he truly hoped this time was different, that the villain that had yet to make it on the MI6 radar wasn't one of them. But one look was enough for him to know that al his fears were about to come true. In retrospect, he thought later, he should have realised it from the outlook of the garden, the flare for dramatics and more likely than not some kind of god complex were sadly quite apparent. It was evident from his lack of flight instinct at the first sight of it that he was truly lulled into the false sense of security by the feeling of victory over not getting caught and returning without the scratch fort he first time.

But as it is in human nature, he wanted to live n denial for a bit longer. However, the sight that greeted him was enough for a very rough awakening, and his defeated sigh was in equal parts due to it and the realisation that luck had truly deserted him fort he time being.

The man in the doorway was tall, with long platinum hair and dressed in a suit that by the looks of it probably cost a fortune. He was flanked on either side by two thugs, and the whole picture held an uncanny resemblance to a certain Death Eater and his stooges thought Alex. The image was further reinforced by a jewel-encrusted walking stick the man in the middle held in his hands.

Alex unsuccessfully tried to stifle the whimper that threatened to escape when the man started making grandiose motions with the stick to position the thugs around the room while he, himself, took the centre position.

Taking one more look at his surroundings Alex gave up fighting for composure as a losing battle when the man opened his mouth and started his speech. And he was talking. And talking. Alex felt another headache building as he was forced to listen the man's (he did introduce himself but Alex didn't care enough to remember his name) pre-prepared speech about his oh-so-great plan of - gardening dictatorship? At that point, Alex almost started paying attention since it was a bit different than the usual spiel about world domination, but the man's droning voice soon erased that thought. Alex quickly found himself dozing of, or he would be if the man wasn't in the habit of nudging him with the stick every now and then to emphasise a point he was making.

It went on for what felt like hours although it was probably only around forty minutes, and Alex was nearing the point when he was willing to give up any and all secrets just for it to stop, when he realised that the speech had yet to touch the matter of his supposed snooping and his work for MI6. It actually caused him to start listening once again to see what it was all about, which served to discover that the man was just notified that he was admiring his gardens and thought to have found a fellow idealist. And the whole thing was, in fact, his recruitment speech and the whole kidnapping was some kind of initiation.

Alex was officially at the loss as to what to do. It wasn't the first time someone tried to sway him over to their way of thinking but it was probably one of the nicest attempts. Lost in thoughts he barely registered the commotion going on around him until he was suddenly graced with the silence. Opening his eyes once again to focus on the room he saw that somehow MI6 actually came for his rescue for a change. And he was grateful, although he felt it had more to do with the danger of his devices falling in the wrong hands than with his well-being. Oh well.

He was quickly freed from his restraints and, remembering his previous train of thought, he quickly turned towards the villain that was then already in the process of being dragged out.

''It actually wasn't half bad for a first try,'' he said sympathetically. ''But do try to keep it short and sweet next time, without all this flare, because your current speech has the unfortunate side effect of boring your victim half to death. Changing your delivery might bring you some extra points,'' he advised him.

He couldn't decide who looked more disbelieving at the sentence, the villain or the MI6 agents present. Alex just shrugged. He told only the truth. He only slightly omitted the fact that the technique would be very efficient if one tried to pry information out of the prisoner. He, for example, was perfectly willing to disclose all his secrets somewhere in the middle. And he could tell from experience that captors with the tendency to have long speeches were the worst. Because it is a well-known fact that not a lot can beat psychological torture.


End file.
